‘Wonder Woman’ Wows With New Clips, So Why Isn’t DC Planning A Sequel?

Wonder Woman again filled fans with hope and excitement for the full film, when director Patty Jenkins introduced two new clips from the feature film at this year’s WonderCon and spoke about adapting the Diana Prince character for film. Proving herself to be a big DC Comics fan, as well as an ambitious Hollywood director with a hunger for strong female characters, Jenkins gave insight into her views of the action and the drama of the Wonder Woman/Diana Prince story.

Wonder Woman Boss Patty Jenkins Says Her Movie Is More Than A DC Adaptation

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jenkins was joined by DC Films’ Geoff Johns at WonderCon, where the Wonder Woman bosses shared a couple clips with fans to tease the premiere of the first film for the Diana Prince character. While the event certainly attracted a large portion of DC Comics readers, Jenkins took an opportunity to stress her feeling that she wasn’t just creating a faithful Wonder Woman adaptation but establishing a story for the Diana Prince character as a whole.

“It’s so much bigger than that,” Jenkins said.

“It’s a method of universal storytelling. … It’s a metaphor for telling all these states of being.”

The Wonder Woman director added that Diana Prince is very different from the rest of the DC heroes in her motivations for doing good. While Superman, Batman, and the others are primarily concerned with serving justice, Wonder Woman takes it a step further. For her, it’s more about spreading love and delivering a message of peace to the world, though she will fight evildoers in the process.

One of the Wonder Woman scenes shown at WonderCon involved Gal Gadot’s character saving Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) in an alley and, if that scene seems familiar, it’s because Jenkins was deliberately paying homage to a similar scene in Richard Donner’s Superman (1978). In that earlier film, Superman (Christopher Reeve) saves Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) from a mugger.

In another scene shared at the event, Wonder Woman takes out a group of German soldiers. Staying true to her moral code, Wonder Woman doesn’t kill any of them, but she does give them a good thrashing.

“What I care about is this as a character piece,” said Jenkins in speaking of the Wonder Woman action sequences.

“It clarifies what it is because it’s from the point of view of Diana and how it affects her journey.”

Why Is DC Films Dragging Its Feet On A Wonder Woman Sequel?

Even before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hit theaters, talk of a Batman solo film was already circulating, yet, even amid so much fan interest surrounding the first Wonder Woman solo film, studio heads are still hesitant to commit to a sequel, reports /Film. In an era when sequels, prequels, and reboots are flooding box offices, the resistance to commit to a Wonder Woman sequel seems cowardly and more than a little sexist.

Fan interest can’t be denied and, if DC Films is looking for a clue as to how that will translate into box office receipts for the upcoming Diana Prince tale, they need only look to the WonderCon attendees. During the Wonder Woman panel, fans were eager to know about plans for future sequels with the Gal Gadot character.

“I can’t confirm that,” was all Geoff Johns would say on the matter.

It may be possible that the studio wants to release Wonder Woman, before jumping ahead to field questions about a sequel. That may be especially true due to the new take Patty Jenkins is giving on the Diana Prince character and the finicky nature of moviegoers in relation to comic book adaptations. For instance, Suicide Squad wasn’t the critical success Warner Bros. had hoped for, though it still performed well at the box office.

Wonder Woman is scheduled to hit theaters on June 2.

[Featured Image by DC Entertainment/Warner Bros.]